What's wrong with the S370 boards that have ISA slots?

Harder to find good board for underclocking/overclocking, less options for CPU choise and chipsets after 440BX are mixed bag in terms of performance.

The Serpent Rider wrote:

What's wrong with the S370 boards that have ISA slots?

Harder to find good board for underclocking/overclocking, less options for CPU choise and chipsets after 440BX are mixed bag in terms of performance.

Personally I don't see the need for underclocking/overclocking vintage systems. The components are already living on borrowed time, no need to speed up the process (pun intended).

Moderate overclocking won't do anything to a lifespan of hardware, even when slightly increasing voltage.

Slot 1 boards give you versatility, I can either run a Pentium 2 233 at 133mhz (with a lower multiplier) or a Pentium 3 1.4GHz tualatin on my slot 1 board, with ISA slots for DOS sound, PCI and AGP graphics

Nipedley wrote:

Slot 1 boards give you versatility, I can either run a Pentium 2 233 at 133mhz (with a lower multiplier) or a Pentium 3 1.4GHz tualatin on my slot 1 board, with ISA slots for DOS sound, PCI and AGP graphics

I like to have a separate machine for each generation separated by year. I already have a topped out year 1999 machine and a decent year 2003 machine and various abominations spanning throughout the gap.

Nipedley wrote:

Slot 1 boards give you versatility, I can either run a Pentium 2 233 at 133mhz (with a lower multiplier) or a Pentium 3 1.4GHz tualatin on my slot 1 board, with ISA slots for DOS sound, PCI and AGP graphics

There aren't very many Slot 1 boards that support Tualatins though. More realistically, you have from PII-233 up to PIII-1000 or Celeron-1100..

xplus93 wrote:

The Serpent Rider wrote:

What's wrong with the S370 boards that have ISA slots?

Harder to find good board for underclocking/overclocking, less options for CPU choise and chipsets after 440BX are mixed bag in terms of performance.

Personally I don't see the need for underclocking/overclocking vintage systems. The components are already living on borrowed time, no need to speed up the process (pun intended).

I tend to agree. If one needs a faster system, then why not just get a faster platform?

Personally I've always liked s370 BX boards, but those were never really common in The Netherlands.

The Serpent Rider wrote:

Moderate overclocking won't do anything to a lifespan of hardware, even when slightly increasing voltage.

But if the overclock is moderate, then there isn't really much of a point to overclock anyway.
There was someone who wasted an ASUS Black Pearl by overclocking 😵 😢 but of course I do realize that it was his board, so his to do with as he pleased.

But if the overclock is moderate

I consider overclocking 440BX chipset up to 150mhz FSB to be moderate. Or overclocking something like the legendary Celeron 300A up to 450-500mhz.

Before I forget, I didn't buy much lately as erm...the thrift stores I visited had poor drops the last couple weeks 😵
But at least I did get a PS/2 keyboard...it's better then nothing.

The Serpent Rider wrote:

But if the overclock is moderate

I consider overclocking 440BX chipset up to 150mhz FSB to be moderate.

Most hardware components will not survive a 150% overclock for any practical amount of time, so personally I wouldn't call a 50% operclock "moderate".

Picked these up yesterday at the local recyclers for cheap.

AGP Matrox G45
PCI Nvidia Geforce 8400GS
PCI Trident 9880
PCI Yamaha YMF724 sound card with PC_PCI connector

Cirrus Logic 5446 for 99p off ebay last night. Couldn't argue for the price, bargains are few and far between on ebay UK these days for older computer stuff.

The Serpent Rider wrote:

But if the overclock is moderate

I consider overclocking 440BX chipset up to 150mhz FSB to be moderate. Or overclocking something like the legendary Celeron 300A up to 450-500mhz.

That's a nasty AGP overclock for some hardware.

BSA Starfire wrote:

cirrus 5446.jpg

Cirrus Logic 5446 for 99p off ebay last night. Couldn't argue for the price, bargains are few and far between on ebay UK these days for older computer stuff.

Best part is the empty memory slots. My 5446 is 1MB with no upgrade slots. Nice catch!

The Serpent Rider wrote:

But if the overclock is moderate

I consider overclocking 440BX chipset up to 150mhz FSB to be moderate. Or overclocking something like the legendary Celeron 300A up to 450-500mhz.

When you can easily put in a PII-450 or PIII-500 what's the point? Also, anything above a 10-15% overclock is most certainly not moderate.

More MIDI sound modules to round out my collection. I'm especially happy about the CM-32L and CM-64. I'd been hunting for at least one of these modules for awhile now, and was surprised to land both in quick succession.

xplus93 wrote:

The Serpent Rider wrote:

But if the overclock is moderate

I consider overclocking 440BX chipset up to 150mhz FSB to be moderate. Or overclocking something like the legendary Celeron 300A up to 450-500mhz.

When you can easily put in a PII-450 or PIII-500 what's the point? Also, anything above a 10-15% overclock is most certainly not moderate.

10-15% is a drop in the bucket as a lot of us here at one point has done 50%+ without any long term issues. Cheap boards and power supplies with rot caps cause more problems than anything else.

nforce4max wrote:

xplus93 wrote:

When you can easily put in a PII-450 or PIII-500 what's the point? Also, anything above a 10-15% overclock is most certainly not moderate.

10-15% is a drop in the bucket as a lot of us here at one point has done 50%+ without any long term issues. Cheap boards and power supplies with rot caps cause more problems than anything else.

Please define "long term" If you mean that you can use a system occasionally for a year or two without stability issues then that's not what I meant. It's like giving a horse stimulants. Yeah, it's going to win a few races. But after a while when you want to go for a ride out in the country he's going to die on you and leave you stranded without a horse. You see anybody putting nitrous in a ferrari GTO? IMO we should all take a look at the classic car world and learn something before we destroy the hobby we love.

The Celeron 300A at 450 mhz was almost a default setting due to the performance, stability, and longevity of the setup. People ran these CPUs for years continuously this way.

gdjacobs wrote:

The Celeron 300A at 450 mhz was almost a default setting due to the performance, stability, and longevity of the setup. People ran these CPUs for years continuously this way.

That's a single isolated case.

Also, I guess I should start a new thread for this subject instead of continuing to clutter up this one.

gdjacobs wrote:

The Celeron 300A at 450 mhz was almost a default setting due to the performance, stability, and longevity of the setup. People ran these CPUs for years continuously this way.

Quite a few CPUs ran perfectly fine when you just changed the FSB. P2's at 66mhz FSB tended to run fine at 100mhz for example, 486/133 at 160 (40mhz instead of 33). I have a 68040/40 running perfectly fine at 50mhz because of a much better heatsink and fan (OEM was just a small heatsink). Once production of a specific chip design was perfected they just sold faster chips at slower speeds as needed.